To think of tomatos
by public static void
Summary: Canon divergence.  Fleur gives Ron an idea and he knows how to go back to his friends. Meanwhile, he eats almost all of the tomatoes.


For the Prompt of the Day Challenge at **The Golden Snitch**. Today's prompt is (food) tomato.

 **Canon divergence.** Fleur gives Ron an idea and he knows how to go back to his friends.

* * *

It had been too long since he ate something different than roots and wild berries. The sweet flavour of the tomato he was munching on filled his mouth, his nose and his very soul with the warmth of home.

It was still very different from his mother's bacon and eggs during a summer morning, or the savoury dishes Ginny sometimes prepared when Mum was busy with this or that, but Ron enjoyed the freshness of the tomato.

"Are you going back?" Fleur asked him as she put the rest of the salad in front of him, watching him with wide blue eyes that showed understanding instead of contempt. Bill had been the same, and Ron remembered why he always thought Bill was the coolest of his brothers: he never judged. "They are alone. They need you."

He slowed down and put the rest of the third tomato on his plate. Fleur took that moment to cut the two red fruits Ron hadn't touched. Only then did he grab a handful of lettuce, some onion and a few olives. He sprinkled olive oil, salt and pepper over it.

"I abandoned them, Fleur," he said, staring at the lettuce and the tomato on his plate. "Harry trusted me. Hermione needed me. And I'm here, enjoying your food when I should be eating mushrooms and drinking river water with them."

Fleur kept to her work, cutting slices of boiled chicken breast and setting them over Ron's salad. Her own plate remained empty.

"That's why you need to go back," she supplied, trying to make eye contact with him. Ron turned to the other side, facing the window.

The waves crashed against the beach in a wild motion. It looked like the locket had felt: the imminent weight that came and drowned him in a heartbeat and then retreated so he could stand up. Then the waves –Voldemort's magic– came again and pulled him into the sea of bitterness.

"I don't know how."

The salad was ready. Bill would be home soon. Fleur smiled at him, pouring cranberry vinaigrette over Bill's salad.

Ron looked at his plate. He wanted more tomato.

"I think you know how," Fleur said calmly, taking to her mouth a tiny piece of chicken. "The same thing that brought you here will lead you back to them."

He frowned. Since when did Fleur speak as cryptically as Dumbledore?

"What brought me here?"

She smiled, and the gesture was somewhat sad.

"That's for you to find out, Ron," Fleur said. "But think of this: why are you here and not at the Burrow?"

Bill came into the house in that moment, and the conversation turned to other topics.

Ron kept thinking about his friends and, out of nowhere, he felt the need to know if Hermione liked tomatoes. He took another bite of the fruit before the answer to Fleur's question came to him.

"I trust Bill," he said, silencing the couple's conversation. Bill looked surprised and confused, while Fleur only looked content. "They trust me too. I have to trust myself to be back with them."

With that, Ron sprung from the table, went to his room to grab his wand and his Deluminator. He went back to the small kitchen. He hugged Bill and Fleur, thanked them for their hospitality, and Apparated away.

"What just happened?" Bill asked Fleur a few seconds after his brother disappeared. "Do you know?"

Fleur smiled cryptically. "I told your brother to think of why he came here to discover how he should go back to Harry and Hermione."

"And?" Bill asked, lifting an eyebrow. "I don't get what that has to do with trusting me."

At that, Fleur frowned and scrunched up her nose. "I don't know. I thought he'd say he came to ask for help. That way, I'd use the spell Ginny showed me to track Harry."

"Ginny knows how to track Harry?" Bill asked, honestly surprised. He knew a few spells that could do the same, but all of them were difficult. "How do you know and why didn't you tell me?"

"That's Ginny's secret." Fleur replied mischievously. "And she won't say anything because it could mean Harry gets tracked by someone else. I supposed she'd make an exception for her brother, but now he's gone and we'll never know."

Bill massaged his temples.

"Look at the bright side," Fleur said with a wide smile. "At least your brother didn't eat all the tomato."


End file.
